26. Max
— ? —
Max
I surface like a drowning man breaking water.
White ceiling. Beeping. A body that feels like someone filled it with sand and then set it on fire. My chest hurts, not the sharp pain of injury but the deep, dull ache of something healing badly. My throat is raw but clear, no tube anymore, just the memory of one.
Where the hell am I?
I try to move and immediately regret it. Everything screams in protest, muscles I didn’t know I had, bones I’d forgotten existed. The beeping gets faster, which probably means something, but I can’t focus enough to figure out what.
Then I feel it. Something warm on my arm.
I turn my head, slowly, because even that takes more effort than it should, and see her.
Cat is slumped in a chair beside my bed, her head resting on my arm, her hand wrapped around mine. She’s crying. Not sobbing, not making noise, just silent tears streaming down her face while her eyes stay closed.
She looks exhausted. Pale. Like she hasn’t slept in days.
“Who made you cry?”
My voice comes out like gravel, scraped raw, barely audible. I cough and try again.
“Who made you cry? I’ll fucking kill them.”
Her head snaps up.
For a moment she just stares at me, her eyes wide and red-rimmed, tears still wet on her cheeks. Then she gasps, this broken, desperate sound, and suddenly she’s out of the chair and leaning over me, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, my nose, my jaw, every part of my face she can reach.
“You’re awake. Oh my God, you’re awake. Max-”
“Cat-”
“Don’t move. Don’t try to talk. I need to get the doctor-”
She’s already halfway to the door, but she keeps looking back at me like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she takes her eyes off me for too long.
“Stay,” I manage.
“I’ll be right back. I swear. Two seconds.”
She’s gone. The door swings shut behind her, and I’m alone with the beeping machines and my aching body and the dawning realization that I have no idea how I got here.
Hospital. I’m in a hospital. That much is obvious. But the last thing I remember is…
The clearing. Sergio’s gun. Cat holding Marcella at gunpoint, that impossible, beautiful, terrifying woman using an unconscious body as a shield.
And then the shot.
I moved. I remember that. I saw Sergio aim at her and I moved without thinking, put myself between the bullet and my wife, because that was the only thing that mattered.
Did it work? Is she…
The door bursts open. Cat is back, practically dragging a doctor behind her.
“He’s awake,” she’s saying. “He spoke to me. He’s actually awake.”
“I can see that, Mrs. Moretti.” The doctor, a woman in her fifties with gray-streaked hair and kind eyes, approaches my bed with a penlight. “Mr. Moretti, can you tell me your full name?”
“Massimo Moretti.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital. Obviously.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I got shot.”
“Good. That’s good.” She shines the light in my eyes, checks my pulse, does all the things doctors do. “Your vitals look strong. How’s your pain level?”
“Manageable.”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
“Five. Maybe six.”
“Liar,” Cat mutters from somewhere to my left.
“Seven,” I amend.
The doctor almost smiles. “I’ll have the nurse bring something for that. In the meantime, I want to run a few more tests, make sure everything’s healing properly. But based on what I’m seeing, I think we can discharge you tomorrow.”
“What about tonight?”
“Tonight we run final checks and arrange transport. Your body’s been through significant trauma, Mr. Moretti. You lost a lot of blood. You were sedated for a week while we stabilized you. Tomorrow, if everything looks good, we can transfer you to the farm with round-the-clock nursing care.”
“A week?”
“Seven days.” The doctor glances at Cat. “Your wife hasn’t left your side. Not once.”
I turn to look at Cat. She’s standing at the foot of my bed now, arms wrapped around herself, looking at me like I’m something precious and fragile and liable to disappear at any moment.
“A week,” I repeat.
“Seven days, four hours, and approximately thirty-seven minutes,” she says. “But who’s counting?”
“Cat-”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracks. “Don’t you dare apologize for being unconscious. You threw yourself in front of a bullet for me. You don’t get to apologize for the consequences.”
“I was going to say thank you.”
“Oh.” She blinks. “For what?”
“For staying. For being here when I woke up.”
“Where else would I be?”
The doctor clears her throat. “I’ll give you two some privacy. The nurse will be in shortly with pain medication, and I’ll want to do a full examination in a few hours. Mr. Moretti, try not to move too much. Your stitches are still healing.”
She leaves. The door clicks shut. And then it’s just me and Cat and the steady beep of machines.
“Come here,” I say.
“You’re supposed to rest.”
“I’m supposed to have my wife within arm’s reach. Come here.”
She hesitates for just a moment, then crosses to the bed and perches carefully on the edge. I reach for her hand, and she takes it, threading her fingers through mine.
“You look terrible,” she says.
“Thanks. You look beautiful.”
“I look like I haven’t slept in a week.”
“You haven’t slept in a week?”
“I’ve slept. Just… not well. Not without you.”
My chest tightens, not from the wound, but from something deeper. Something that has nothing to do with bullets and everything to do with the woman sitting beside me.
“Tell me what happened,” I say. “After I went down.”
“What do you remember?”
“Sergio. The shot. And then… nothing.”
Cat takes a breath. Holds it. Lets it out slowly.
“You fell. There was so much blood, Max. So much blood, and you weren’t moving, and I thought-” She stops, her voice catching. “Enzo was there. He and one of his captains grabbed you, carried you between them, ran for the cars. I don’t know how they moved that fast.”
“Adrenaline.”
“I guess.” She’s staring at our joined hands. “I called him. During the chaos. I told him where we were, and he came with everything he had. His men, Nico’s men, everyone.”
“Nico?”
“He chose us. When Sergio fired, when his father shot at me without caring that Marcella was right there, Nico chose us. He turned his own people against the faction.”
“Good man.”
“He’s been asking about you. Everyone has. You scared the shit out of a lot of people.”
“What about Sergio? Lucia? Marcella?”
“They were all captured.” Her jaw tightens. “Enzo has been handling it.”
“Handling it how?”
“Sergio is dead. Enzo told me this morning. Marcella is being held on a guarded family property overseas; she has no money or people left to call. Lucia is going to a separate house under the same restrictions. Neither will come near us again.” She looks up at me, waiting.
I lie still and let that settle. My mother chose to open the gate. Whether she expected me to survive does not undo it. “Nico knows?”
Cat nods. “He gave Enzo the names of everyone still answering to his father. They can’t keep this going without money or men.”
“Am I terrible for being relieved?” she asks. “For not wanting to know more?”
“No. That’s practical.”
“It feels terrible. Lucia is your mother.”
“Lucia helped plan an ambush that nearly killed me. She’s not my mother anymore. She’s just… a problem that needs solving.”
Cat nods slowly. “Okay. Okay, good.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said I was out for a week. What did you do for a week?”
“I stayed. I sat in that chair and I held your hand and I talked to you.” Her voice goes soft. “I read you my book. The whole thing, chapter by chapter. I figured if you could hear me…”
“I couldn’t. I don’t remember any of it.”
“That’s okay. I’ll read it to you again. When you’re better.”
“I’d like that.”
We sit in silence for a moment. The machines beep. The hospital breathes around us.
“Cat.”
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
She goes still on the edge of the bed, her hand tightening around mine, and I make myself say the thing I’ve been carrying since the clearing.
“Before the shot. In the woods. I told you-”
“I know what you told me.”
“I meant it. Every word.”
“I know.”
“And I need you to know that I’m not just saying it because I almost died. I’m saying it because it’s true, and I should have said it months ago, and I’m never going to stop saying it.” I squeeze her hand. “I love you.”
She’s crying again. Not the silent tears from before, but real crying now, her shoulders shaking, her breath catching in her throat.
“Don’t cry,” I say. “Please. I can’t handle you crying.”
“I’m not crying because I’m sad. I’m crying because you’re awake and you’re alive and I spent a week thinking I might never hear your voice again.”
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’d better not. You promised me a second chance. You don’t get to die before I decide whether to give it to you.”
“Have you decided?”
She leans forward, careful not to put pressure on my chest, and presses her lips to mine. It’s soft, gentle, the kind of kiss that says I’m here and you’re here and nothing else needs saying.
“I love you,” she whispers against my mouth. “I love you, and I don’t want to lose you. Never.”
“Me neither.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Yes, I do. I was scared. I was so scared of getting hurt again that I couldn’t let myself-” She pulls back, meets my eyes. “You spent weeks trying to earn my trust, and I kept holding back, and then you threw yourself in front of a bullet for me, and I realized-”
“Realized what?”
“That I already trusted you. I just wasn’t ready to admit it.”
My heart does something complicated. “Cat-”
“I called you once. From the farm, the night with the peaches. It rang once and I hung up like a coward, and then I lay there wanting to call back and didn’t.”
“Cat-”
“If you had died without knowing-”
“Stop.” I reach up, ignoring the protest of my stitches, and cup her face in my hand.
“I knew. I texted you back, remember? I knew exactly who it was. You did what you had to do to survive. You protected yourself and our baby when you thought no one else would. That’s not something to apologize for. What matters is we’re here now.”
“Max-”
“I’m the one who’s sorry. For all of it. For the cold, for the silence, for every moment I made you feel like you weren’t the center of my entire world.” My voice catches. “You are, Cat. You always have been. I was just too afraid to show it.”
Her eyes spill over again. We’re both crying now, actually, which is probably not great for my recovery but I can’t bring myself to care.
“I love you,” I say again. “I’m going to keep saying it until you get sick of hearing it.”
“I’ll never get sick of hearing it.”
“Good. Because I plan to say it a lot.”
She laughs, this wet, broken sound that’s half sob and half joy, and leans her forehead against mine.
“One more night,” she says. “The doctor said one more night, and then we can go home.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“Too bad. You’re staying.”
“Cat-”
“No. You don’t get to argue about this. You’ve been unconscious for a week. You’re staying until the doctor says you can leave, and then we’re going back to the farm, and you’re going to rest until you’re fully healed.”
“The farm?”
“It’s still ours. We know how they found it.
Enzo changed the deliveries and put his own men on every approach.
Nobody on Lucia’s old staff comes near it.
We won’t pretend the address is a secret, but it is guarded.
” She sits back, wiping her eyes. “The doctor says you’ll need monitoring for a while. Physical therapy. Time to recover.”
“I don’t need-”
“You absolutely do. You got shot, Max. You almost died. You’re not going to rush this.”
I want to argue. I want to point out that I’ve survived worse, that I don’t have time to lie around convalescing, that there’s a family to run and a peace to maintain and a thousand things that need my attention.
But she’s looking at me with that fierce, determined expression, and I realize with sudden clarity that I’m going to lose this argument. I’m going to lose every argument with this woman for the rest of my life.
And I don’t mind at all.
“Fine,” I say. “One more night.”
“Thank you.”
“But you’re staying with me.”
“I wasn’t planning to leave.”
“Good. Come here.”
She shifts closer, carefully arranging herself against the bed rail so she can rest her head on my shoulder without putting pressure on my chest. It’s not comfortable, hospital beds weren’t designed for two people, but I don’t care.
She’s warm and solid and alive, and I can feel her breathing against my collarbone.
“I told you you were safe with me,” I murmur into her hair.
“NEVER do that again.” Her voice cracks. “Do you hear me? Never. My baby needs a father. I need-”
“What do you need?”
“I need you. Alive. Present. Actually here instead of just occupying space.” She pulls back to look at me.
“I need the man from the farm. The one who cooked me breakfast and read me terrible prose and let a goose chase him across the yard. I need you to be that man forever, not just when we’re hiding from danger. ”
“I can do that.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Because if you die on me, Max Moretti, I swear to God I’ll find a way to bring you back just so I can kill you myself.”
I laugh, and immediately regret it as pain lances through my chest. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”
“Sorry. But I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
The door bangs open.
Nico stands in the doorway, arms spread wide, his face a mixture of relief and fury and something that might be tears.
“Motherfucker,” he says. “You scared the SHIT out of us.”